PEGGY NOONAN GOES TO TAMPA

Peggy Noonan, in her book titled What I Saw at the Revolution, tells of the period in which she worked as a speechwriter in the Ronald Reagan White House.  In her book Noonan reveals that Reagan, due to his deafness, could not hear what was said in a group unless the words were spoken directly to him.  She describes her first meeting with the president several months after she began writing his speeches.

There he was, behind his desk, turning toward me: a big, tall, radiant man, impeccably tailored, his skin soft, pink and smooth. He twinkled at me. I was the new one, and the only woman. He walked to me and took my hand. It is the oddest thing and true, even though everyone says it: it is impossible to be nervous in his presence. He acts as if he's lucky to be with you. ''Well,'' he said, ''it's so wonderful to meet you. Please, please sit down. Well, so!''

We sat, I in the spot on the couch immediately to his right. I don't really remember what we talked about. There was no reason for the meeting beyond ''The new speechwriter's unhappy and let's let her meet him or she may leave.'' The President sat up straight in his chair, a piece of beige plastic in his ear. I was surprised how big his hearing aid is, or rather how aware of it you are when you're with him. There was a quizzical look on his face as he listened to what was going on around him, and I realized: he doesn't really hear very much, and his appearance of constant good humor is connected to his deafness. He misses much of what is not said straight to him, and because of that he keeps a pleasant look on his face as people chat around him.

The meeting lasted half an hour. Conversation ambled. The President looked around sometimes as if to say: ''What are we doing here, folks?'' I felt guilty at taking his time.

Since Noonan was and is an ardent admirer of Reagan, I was surprised that she revealed that much of the time during meetings, Reagan did not know what was going on because he could not hear.  The president also may have had symptoms of Alzheimer's while he was still in office, according to his son, Ron.

But I digress. What I really want to talk about is Noonan's report on the Republican National Convention in the Wall Street Journal.  After getting off to a slow start because President Obama convinced the weather services to wrongly report that Tropical Storm Isaac was headed for Tampa, the convention got its groove on the second night with Mike Huckabee.

It started with Mike Huckabee. He is a performer, he knows how to do this, and he made the audience listen. But he is also a policy person and a veteran campaigner who knows the base.

Mike knows the base base, indeed.

That was electric. Every speaker afterwards got to bounce off the energy Mr. Huckabee left in the room.

Condi Rice was a star. She took the role of accomplished and knowledgable public instructor, boiling down the conservative critique of Mr. Obama's foreign policy.

Oh I remember the bright star Condi sitting with a vacant look on her face holding up the President's Daily Briefing from August 2011 which was titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US" as she was questioned by a member of the 9/11 Commission as to why there was no response by the White House to the warning.  If you recall, Bush was on vacation in Texas at the time and did not return to DC.

The most important speech Wednesday was Paul Ryan's. America was meeting him. I won't quote at length, since it's all over the Internet and you already know the lines that scored—the college kid and the Obama poster, the elevator music. Great stuff.

But here's what was important. Mr. Ryan started awkward, got his sea legs, settled down, and by the time he was finished he'd made Mr. Obama look tired and old. He made the administration sound over. He made it sound so yesterday.

I watched less than 5 minutes of Ryan's speech and decided that he was FOS and became bored, so I stopped watching.

And yet. He [Ryan] seemed very young up there. And the teleprompter forced him to shift his eyes from screen to screen and deliver the good line, plonkingly, to the center screen. The crowd loved him and conservatives love him, but he is going to have to work very hard to break through to America. 

   Indeed!

Clint Eastwood was funny, endearing—"Oprah was crying"—and carries his own kind of cultural authority. "It's time for somebody else to come along and solve the problem." He was free-form, interesting—you didn't quite know what was going to come next—strange and, in the end, kind of exhilarating. Talk about icons. The crowd yelling, "Make my day," was one of the great convention moments, ever.

Whoa!  Did Peggy and I watch the same "speech"?  Again, I saw less than 5 minutes because it was excruciatingly embarrassing to watch Clint meandering around talking to an empty chair.  How could the organizers of the convention let this happen to Eastwood who had volunteered out of the goodness of his heart to help them?

Mitt Romney's speech? The success of the second night of the convention left people less nervous about the stakes. Nobody expected a great one. There was a broad feeling of, "Look, giving great speeches is not what Mitt does, he does other things."

He had to achieve adequacy. He did.

Ouch!  I suggest Noonan's commentary be used in lessons in English rhetoric as an example of damning with faint praise.  Ah well, she gave it her best.

Again, I did not last 5 minutes with Romney's speech.  I nearly fell out of my chair when I heard Romney say that Americans came together after Obama's election.  How long after the inauguration was it before we heard the first racist commentary?  How long before we saw the first racist posters and pictures?  Yes, I know.  The commentary and pictures were there all throughout the campaign, but there was no coming together after Obama's election, except in your dreams, Mr Romney.

Now you know know that I watched very little of the activities of the RNC, but others did.  For a somewhat different take on the speakers, I suggest you read my good friend Elizabeth Kaeton's report on the major speeches at her blog "Telling Secrets".

Margaret of "Margaret and Helen" watched the speeches, too, and posted her hilarious commentary. 

So. Who ya gonna believe?  Peggy Noonan took a trip, but was it to the RNC in Tampa?